Book of Dead: The Expanding Symbol Explained

Play'n GO runs Book of Dead on a five-reel, three-row grid with ten fixed paylines, a layout that's since become a genre standard rather than anything unusual. The theme leans hard into pyramids, scarabs, and explorer tropes, but the mechanics are what carried it beyond a niche release — a scatter book symbol that also acts as the trigger for the entire bonus round.

Land three or more scattered books and ten free spins begin. Before the spins start, one regular symbol is chosen at random and turns "expanding" for the whole round — it fills its entire reel every time it appears, which can produce a screen-covering win if it lands on multiple reels in one spin. Because that symbol is picked fresh for each bonus trigger, the free spins round can range from a quiet run to a dramatically lucrative one.

Volatility runs high, and the listed RTP is 96.2%, consistent with a game built for occasional large payouts rather than frequent small ones. Free spin offers that route through Book of Dead specifically tend to come with clearer wagering math than most, since the bonus round is the whole game in miniature — what happens in those ten spins is close to what the base game would eventually deliver over a much longer session.

Paf lists Book of Dead in its slot catalogue, and it remains a reasonable benchmark for anyone comparing other Egyptian-themed, expanding-symbol titles against the original formula.